Be a Good Girl, Sandy Jones

The words hurt, to say the least. To know, fully, that Dani didn’t want to be seen with me in public. That I wasn’t important enough to her. I mean, we weren’t even supposed to be friends, but here we were, being secret friends. The image of kissing her flashed into my mind and I shook my head, going to my locker to put on the hoodie I had in there, it was black with spider webs on every inch of the fabric, and covered up the girly clothes I had decided to put on. I didn’t even want to go to any of my classes today.

I watched indifferently as a group of ‘friends’ walked over with a few newbies in the group. I smirked, one of the freshmen was grinning like a moron, meaning that this was what I thought it was.

“Want to come with us to show these freshies how to really blow a smoke ring?” One of the guys, Mark, asked me. He liked me, and we’d probably try it out if it wasn’t for the fact that the only reason we knew each other was that we got stoned together. But then again, Dani and I only knew each other, talked to each other even, because of a stupid History project. I smirked.

“Sure, now?” I asked, seeing as it was still morning. Mark smiled at me and I knew the answer. I threw my backpack in my locker and we walked out of the school. I saw Dani and Taylor still talking on the field, Dani all smiles and giggles. I glared and didn’t even think that she’d care if I skipped the day. I just wouldn’t tell her what I went to go do. Her eyes caught my walking figure and her eyebrows stitched together.

I sighed, she knew exactly what I was going to go do, and it wasn’t like she was going to try and stop me. I threw an arm over Mark’s shoulders and laughed at whatever one of the newbies had joked about, making everyone else laugh.

We piled into a small car and repeated the routine we had done so many times. Go to Mark’s house, go down to his basement and light it up. Only it was better then joints, it was a huge bong, made of blue glass that looked as if it swirled. We filled it up with the right amount of water, put the weed in and light it as I went first.

“Ok, watch carefully newbies. This is what we call Sandy Style,” Mark joked, and I breathed in. It continued, until the smoke filled up the large glass basin, and the dried up herb was a mere pile of ashes. And I didn’t even have to stop to take another breath, or get rid of the oxygen in my lungs. I had some sort of hole in my left lung, it just escaped into my body, just disappearing or something, I sometimes had trouble breathing, so I didn’t do anything that caused me to breathe too heavily, other then running. I was good at running, I was good at keeping my heart rate and breathing rate down when I was running. I wasn’t supposed to do a lot of it, so I only did it at night when the air is moist and cool, easy on my lungs. I used this hole in my lung to my advantage when showing off.

I sucked in all the smoke, every last molecule of it and held it in as long as I could without any of the smoke going out of the hole. I blew out steadily, then let out short bursts, just pursing my lips enough for rings of smoke to leave my lips, creating one after another.

Just with that, I was high as a kite, and ready for a nap. I laid back and watched the newbies try to do what I just did, but laughed when they choked and began puttering, smoke lumps leaving their slightly parted lips.

“Hey Mark, pass those over here,” I drone out in a lazy slur, watching him pass around a bag of dried up stump things. I knew those to be mushrooms, those funny little things that made me see little white caterpillars crawl all over my walls for hours on end. He smiled, and set a few aside.

“I’ll just send you home with some Sandy, wouldn’t want you to go bonkers with two different drugs in your system,” he said, his eyes flickering to things only he could see.

I nodded and tried to get up, but lost my balance at the last second and fell back, onto Mark’s lap. I giggled and wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed the tip of his nose. He gave a delighted chuckle and wrapped both his arms around my waist, to keep me steady.

“So, whats with you and that Dani girl? She doesn’t seem like your type,” he grinned. He knew that I had a thing for both genders, lets just say that there’s been a few times when I’ve full-out made out with girls he’s brought to his place, so he’d get laid after a good high. He was fond of my way to just get people to like me, if I really wished for it. I could convince anyone to do just about anything.

“Well, she’s not, not really. We’re working on a project, and well these feelings didn’t start until I kissed her,” I confessed. He was the only one listening to me, everyone else was captivated in the rushing ceiling and swirling glass.

“You kissed her?” His eyes widening.

“Well, we got high together, and um, she was still up there, I was coming down and well, it just happened,” I confessed again, my mouth just forming words and my tongue spitting them out. He nodded.

“And she doesn’t know, does she?” I shook my head.

“Well, you know what you girls always try to pull? Making boys jealous, so maybe it works on girls too,” he suggested. I nodded and I saw his meaningful smirk.

“Would you like to be my pretend boyfriend, Mark? Just kissing though, nothing else,” I warned him, letting him know that if he tried anything else, it’d be his head. And not the one on top of his neck. My words were slow and slurred however, but I knew he understood the message behind them.

“I have to go,” I tried to get up but Mark kept me down.

“Stay a while Sandy, no one’s missing you at the party,” he murmured against my ear. By the party, he meant school, and I guessed he was right.

So, I stayed a while. I didn’t actually get a ride to my house until well after dark. I gave Mark a practice kiss and then rushed inside. My mom said something about Dani dropping by, but not waiting for me to get home. She must be furious. Not to mention the fact that I had turned off my cell phone. I turned it on and saw there was a total of 3 text messages, all from Dani, all asking where I was. I didn’t reply. I snuck into my mom’s secret cabinet and brought a bottle of whiskey into my room. I took straight swings of the nasty alcohol, my eyes watering terribly. But it did the job, I was stumbling around my room getting ready for bed less then half an hour later, stashing the bottle under my bed. I hid the plastic-wrapped dried up ‘shrooms under my bed with the bag of joints I had left and chuckled at how much trouble I would get into if police attempted searching through my room.

I sat on my bed, rocking back and forth, listening to the silent house. My mother and Rob were both gone out for the night, they left just after I got home. I peeled off my shirt and jeans and stared at the faint scars I had on the exposed skin. First, it began with yelling, then the cutting followed, so I wouldn’t scream. Then the anger began, the drugs and alcohol followed suit, and now I was like this. Scarred, broken, angry, and self loathing.

Why didn't I have someone better, why can't you be like those nice girls across the street? How did I end up with a demon like you, you're always full of disappointments. Get out of my face. You're ugly, a slut, a dirty whore, get out of my house you bitch. You should have gone with your father, when he left us, oh but I forgot, HE LEFT BECAUSE OF YOU! It's your fault, all your fault. Rob is the only one I have anymore, and you've already tried to take him multiple times now! All those times I've caught anything between you two, how could you? Want to take the last bit of happiness I have left? Past words screamed in my head, past words from my mother’s beautiful lips. She was so ugly when she was angry, deathly wrinkles on her forehead and cheeks, face a bright cherry red, eyes crazed and glazed. I took the bottle from under my bed, locked my bedroom door securely, then kept drinking as the words exploded in my head, and soon my pillow was rushing up to hit my face, the bottle of whiskey rolling onto the floor, spilling whatever was left in the bottle onto my hardwood floor.

I was out like a light in a matter of minutes, and wouldn’t wake up again until tomorrow afternoon, with a killer headache, a dry tongue, and a rolling stomach. I didn’t even want to go face Dani today, but in a matter of thirty minutes, she was at my door, banging away on the thick oak.